


firefly, don't you cry

by InkWitch (serkestic)



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Canon - Anne of Green Gables (Books) and Anne with an E (TV) Combination, Canon Rewrite, F/M, Gilbert Blythe & Anne Shirley Friendship, Pining Gilbert Blythe, hanahaki disease if you squint, i cannot unsee amybeth as anne shirley, or lucas zumann as gilbert blythe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25979398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serkestic/pseuds/InkWitch
Summary: On a day the snow had become puddles, he found his ghost sitting beside the grave and sticking her flowers into the muddy snow. When Anne finally stood, sighing in self-satisfaction, her attention fell on Gilbert with a climactic thud. Anne’s startlement made her gaze skitter away first.“Gilbert,” she said. She was breathless. “Hello.”“Hello, Anne,” said Gilbert and, to his fascination, her face turned pink.A rewrite of canon with mutual hanahaki disease.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	firefly, don't you cry

He found flowers on his father’s tombstone the first time he visited after his return. The cool pink apple blossoms framed by a wreath of violet geraniums stood vivid and defiant against the snow collected on top of the tombstone. Instead of being leached by its drab background, the flowers were riotously gay. He considered them.

It had taken Gilbert three weeks to scrounge up the courage to come to the grave. Three weeks of settling the house, the debts, fixing up his life in Avonlea, of feeling like a stranger in the midst of all the familiar curious faces. The house creaked at night. He lay in his bed staring at the ceiling until dawn’s light crept through the windows, peeking in desperately no matter how tightly he drew the curtains. Sometimes he imagined he could still hear the rattling gasping breaths of his father; but that was just his fanciful imaginings. His father was gone, the house was empty of him, and Gilbert could no longer pretend it felt like home anymore.

It was this feeling of foreignness that finally drove him to his father’s resting place.

He had assumed that it would not have any visitors. While his father had been fairly liked and respected in the town—social capital that he was still profiting off of, bringing back a ‘foreign friend’ as he had—only family came to gravesites. It was the norm. Someone had broken the norm. Their flowers waved merrily in the breeze, one stalk on the verge of breaking under the weight of its bud. Gilbert stole one of the apple blossoms and left.

In the following weeks, he returned only before sunset, bringing with him empty hands and an empty head. What with Bash, school, and his daily frustration at the house falling apart and his acute impotence, his father’s grave seemed the only place of respite that truly belonged to him anymore. He always found the flowers there.

One day, he arrived earlier on a whim. Fresh footsteps in the melting snow: they were lithe and had a sprightly gait. The snow beside the tombstone was disturbed as if someone had knelt there. Gilbert’s kind ghost had left rough twigs in their bouquet. He took the twigs and left.

“Why don’t you lie in wait to catch whoever it is?” asked Bash. He was putting on John’s old boots, although the heel on the left one was coming off. He tapped his finger on it, brushed some mud off before pushing it back into the shoe with some pressure.

“It didn’t occur to me,” replied Gilbert. He was sewing on a button on Bash’s overcoat. His stitches were neat but misaligned. “Should I?”

“If you ain’t curious, boy,” said Bash, “you’re bored.”

He visited his father more sporadically. When his visit came closer to night-time, he sat on top of the tombstone and felt wetness sink into the seat of his pants. A part of him hoped for an apparition to appear in front of him and speak with his father’s youthful voice; his travels had made him more superstitious. He had already begun to forget the cadence of John’s words, so he clung even harder to his child’s memories of playing catch and being yelled at. Gilbert’s heart ached with emptiness and he promised fervently, kneeling at the grave: “I’ll make something of myself, father, I swear to you.”

Gilbert was smart. He knew that he was looking for a sign. But Providence never delivered what you expected; only what you wanted.

On a day the snow had become puddles here and there, he found his ghost sitting beside the grave and sticking her flowers into the muddy snow. Her hair had grown more boyish, in that awkward in-between stage, but under her cap it looked stylish to him. She was not wearing gloves. Her fingertips were bone white.

When Anne finally stood, sighing in self-satisfaction, her attention fell on Gilbert with a climactic thud. They gazed at each other silently. She put her hands in her pockets in coltish inelegance.

What was it about her that broke through his shell? Gilbert wondered. He had never even had time to be annoyed about his interest in her, the way other boys had been; he was too busy with his curiosity.

Anne’s startlement made her gaze skitter away first. She stepped forward and hesitated. “Gilbert,” she said. She was breathless. “Hello.”

“Hello, Anne,” said Gilbert and, to his fascination, her face turned pink.

Anne looked at him with her typical wide-eyed gaze. She bit her lip and it bloomed red in the white tundra of her face. “Marilla came to put flowers here and clean up a few times and I came with her. She stopped after a while though, her knees have started to trouble her and I said she oughtn’t risk her health like that, so I…” Her voice had run out of air and its lowness sank into Gilbert’s chest.

“I… I have been visiting your father,” she finished lamely.

He watched as she straightened her shoulders and walked towards him. Her gait was lithe and unmeasured, and her feet slid on the snow when she came to a stop beside him. Anne was still pink in the face but there was an air of determination about her. It was _so_ endearing; Gilbert’s chest felt tight with warmth. It seemed like she was waiting for a response, so Gilbert stepped away from the graveyard and asked, “May I walk you home, Anne?”

They followed the old school path, through the Haunted Woods.

They picked their way home in silence. Anne seemed to have sunk deep in thought, letting her feet tread their familiar route. Gilbert was content enough to follow her lead: he was busy concerning himself with noting down the little changes he spotted in his school fellow. For one, Anne was taller. Gilbert had shot up, in his time away, his travels making his beansprout growth more mature with hardened muscles and rough calluses. So, it was not immediately noticeable; but taller she was, a gangly girl with elfin grace. And another note: Anne spoke less. This was obviously strange, with Anne’s clear reputation as the town chatterbox—perhaps only to be beaten by Ruby, on specific topics, like boys, and Gilbert—and yes, perhaps that is ample explanation for why now the redhead matched Gilbert’s steps in thoughtful quietude instead. Gilbert had been ignoring her at school, lately, preoccupied as he was with the terrible approach of his future. He wondered at the difference in her frosty bristling silence, and now, the dreamer at his side. A sudden urgency blinked awake inside him.

Gilbert cleared his throat and the sound almost echoed in the woods before getting swallowed by fog. Anne looked up at him.

"Are you not cold?" he said just as she blurted out, “Where have you been?”

Gilbert looked at her nonplussed. “I’ve been… at home?” he finishes with uncertainty but is met with vigorous head-shaking. Anne’s cheeks are red as she continues to gaze up at him.

“I meant,” she faltered, her cheeks reddening even deeper. “I meant on your travels! I am so curious, but I know it isn’t lady-like to ask about such things. But I do _not_ eavesdrop and I’d rather hear about your news from yourself or not at all, and certainly not from the lips of a Pye.” She glared distastefully at the snow before looking back at him. “You don’t have to tell me, after all. I am only asking.”

He was thinking of her letter and he was thinking of how he had wished there had been more, as Gilbert said, “I would tell you anything, Anne.” He steadfastly did not look at her, but instead swung his arms wider, as if he was getting warm. There was no faltering in their steps. “I’ve been to Jamaica, Trinidad, any place the cargo ship went, though I did not go ashore everywhere. There was always work to be done.” And he told her his stories, his life on the grimy underside of the ship as well as the chaos and colour of the island sunshine. He only kept silent on Bash’s mother; and the story that had brought him home. The certainty of that moment came back to him, and left him confused. He glanced at his companion to distract himself.

“Oh!” Anne had shining eyes. “I do love being a girl, but sometimes Gilbert, I wish I were a boy. What adventures!”

“You have had adventures yourself, from what I hear,” said Gilbert in amusement.

Anne deflated. “It _was_ exciting to solve the mystery of the gold,” she said. “But when I look at how many people suffered because of those evil villains, it’s hard to think of it as an adventure. Look at Diana’s father, look at Ruby’s! It’s a _tragedy_. And Marilla almost got hurt because of me!” She fell into silence again.

“How are things, Anne-girl?” he said, and when she refocused on him, he noted his own pleasure at it.

“Avonlea is Avonlea,” she said. She glanced once at him, bright curiosity, and asked slowly, “Is it not?”

Trust Anne to cut through the thick. Gilbert found himself unable to look away from her, as if he was being compelled by an outside force. Or maybe he was just taking note of her bright red nose. With a slowness that seemed to frustrate Anne, he undid his scarf and handed it to her, gesturing for her to put it on. She did so, after a minute of consideration. Her red hair spilled over and tangled in his scarf as she pulled it over half her face. Then she gazed at him expectantly.

“Avonlea _is_ Avonlea,” Gilbert agreed, carefully. “But I feel as if _I_ am not… in Avonlea.” His pause did not go unnoticed. He was suddenly terrified that Anne would see through him, again.

He did not feel like he had come home: the honest horrific truth of it weighed him down. His mother and father gone, the house with only him and Bash and them barely seeing each other in the midst of work and school; Gilbert’s own confusion with his future and a secret childish want for a father to _show_ him what to do so that he did not have to do this hard work of fumbling through life to figure it out. He felt a stranger in his own skin. And it made him churlish and skittish. Then there was Bash. Though Gilbert would never do him the disservice of thinking that he had _brought_ Sebastian, every time his neighbours badly hid their winces and flinches around a free-thinking, free-speaking black man amid their throng, Gilbert felt sick guilt pool in his stomach. It tore him more when Bash said _nothing_ and went on as if they were still on the boat, and Gilbert was the inexperienced newbie. The most he did for his loyal friend was match him in manliness and go about as if he did not know.

And finally, the last truth, he felt the panicking grasp of time. A growing awareness that he was newly orphaned and alone and must grow up as soon as possible.

Anne was looking at him with a soft smile, but only in her eyes. She said, “It’s okay to feel like you’re alone now that he’s gone,” and Gilbert’s terror jumped blood into his cheeks. “But you know, Gilbert… you _aren’t_.”

It was her turn to swing her arms to feign insouciance, though she looked like an anorexic milkmaid doing it. “People love you, Gilbert,” she said. “You only need to look around you. It’s so obvious, I am not sure why I have to say it. Even Marilla loves you, she worries after you so. And I…” And Anne stopped herself in self-consciousness.

“I think you will be alright,” said Anne, earnest.

They were at the fences of Green Gables; he spotted the French farmhand watching them from his perch on a horse; he vaguely wondered, _has Jerry ever liked Anne_ , and the thought made him annoyed for having had it. He followed Anne right to the doorstep, his heart feeling a complicated concoction of… things. When Anne turned to grin at him, schoolish camaraderie, there was tinge of relief to it. Gilbert held out his hand for his scarf.

As she unwound the wool, pulling brilliant strands of her hair free from it, Gilbert felt an odd sense of awareness build in his body. When he thought about Anne, more and more, he just wanted to be near her. To speak to her and listen to her speak back. His pulse was jumping in his jugular, and his mind kept repeating her words, lingering over _love_ , again and again. Anne had actually said the word _love_ to him. He did not know why it thrilled. When Anne handed over his scarf, he caught it so their palms touched. It was an instinct and the electric warmth of it rang through him.

She held still at the kitchen door a moment, standing on the stoop so their eyes were level. Gilbert watched Anne's fingers curl on his palm for a heartbeat. Then she drew further into the house and said, "I'll see you on Christmas Eve." And shut the door in his face.

He decided to move his father’s wardrobe out of the bedroom. In the morning, he found petals of apple blossoms on his pillow.


End file.
